Tag Archives: amy poisson

Arts & Entertainment, Theatre

A Steampunk “Clockwork Professor” with Roombas Gone Wrong

Brad Walked, Narea Kang, and Randall Brammer in a press photo from The Clockwork Professor (Photo: Pork Filled Productions/Roger Tang)

In steampunk, everything is familiar but rearranged. The same is true of The Clockwork Professor, a world premiere by Maggie Lee presented by Pork Filled Productions (at Theatre Off Jackson through August 3). The result is a frivolous diversion, making for pleasant, well-meaning entertainment.

Lee draws on major steampunk tropes familiar to readers of works such as Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy and Mark Helprin’s Winter’s Tale. The Clockwork Professor’s world is justified by parallel universes (which inevitably entangle), dominated by a desperate fascist state, and driven by rival engineers who create impossible magical machines. Lee’s flights of fantasy remain at low altitude, though, rooted in our contemporary world as Roombas gone wrong and human cloning take prominent places in the plot.

The eponymous engineer of this story is one Professor Seamus Pemberton (Brad Walker) who melodramatically suffers a pair of torments (because steampunk theatre apparently reworks Victorian dramatics as well as aesthetics). The greatest of these is his unexpressed love for this assistant, Matilda (Natea Kang), though he also carries secrets that might drive her from him.

Pemberton’s worries soon escalate as a pair of clients arrives (Karissa Samples and Sascha Streckel), with an offer he can’t refuse. The clients are in fact robots acting under orders of the Crown.

In order to preserve the monarchy following an assassination, Dr. Higgins (Phillip Keiman) has stashed clones in alternate universes. However his portal key is broken and only Dr. Pemberton can fix and operate it. He does so, opening a door to our universe. The robots extract a clone named Sophie (Ana Maria Campoy) but her keeper, Jin (Moses Yim), who has fallen in love with her, follows through the portal to her rescue. Pemberton, Matilda, and their daffy friend, Lawrence (Randal Brammer) aid Jin and all ends well. A radio announcer (Melissa Slaughter) oversees the story with some clever shadow puppetry and sound design.

As a largely materialist movement, a steampunk production must give central focus to props and costumes. Samantha Armitage’s costumes feel higher budget than the rest of this production. She hits all the major requirements with bowlers, lots of leather, and a dagger-handled cane all in an earth-tone palette.

Robin McCartney’s props achieve less but create a third layer of technology with pieces that are obviously of our time. A key prop appears to consist of an LED fixture set into a speaker diaphragm. While the piece as a whole lacks the polish or dull gilt of the steampunk aesthetic, this third layer suggests a fruitful approach. One wonders how a more consistent application of such an approach would have played.

There are some minor unforced script errors in the logic of cross-dimension travelers and some consistently odd acting choices that suggest directorial weakness from Amy Poisson. For all the fun of and whimsy, there’s an amateurish tendency to establish power by shouting and to shout louder for emphasis. There are also frequent blocking problems for both sightlines and naturalness of crosses. (The pacing feels especially steampunk as it lumbers along laboriously with occasional bursts of laser sharpness.)

There’s potential for depth in this show and Lee contributes some valuable questions to the contemporary existential concerns relating to human cloning. But, for better or for worse, this intellectual side is glazed over, useful for motivation more than contemplation. While Lee’s characters raise the question of how a clone feels about her identity, the script diminishes its importance.

In art we tend to look for the evolution, the mutation, the recombination that is definably new, but The Clockwork Professor reminds us of the value in consistency and the rewards of the predictable.

Arts & Entertainment, Theatre

Misadventures and More at Annex Theatre’s Patty

Marianna de Fazio as Patty and Kelsey Yuhara as her super-powered friend Jen in Annex's The Strange Misadventures of Patty...

With a title like The Strange Misadventures of Patty, Patty’s Dad, Patty’s Friend Jen, and a Whole Bunch of Other People, Annex Theatre’s new production (through August 27; tickets: $5-$15) tips you off right away that it’s going to force some whimsy upon you. It’s not the worst thing to have pressed upon you, it’s just that there’s a compelling real-life drama at the heart of the play that all the kicky antics serve mainly to distract from.

In Allison Moore‘s play, directed by Amy Poisson, corporate economist Patty (Marianna de Fazio) is abruptly woken from her good-life autopilot by her estranged, alcoholic father’s stroke, and confronted by the complex series of negotiations rising from his new vulnerability and dependency. We don’t see her past experiences, just her bewildered, frustrated father (Jon Lee) mangling his way through explanations, justifications, and proud-papa-isms.

Lee and de Fazio are very good together; there’s almost a Method fierceness in Lee’s portrayal of an aphasic old man, previously stunned by his alcoholism. A reprobate’s cackle infiltrates his fond reminiscences of Patty’s childhood, but he can grow frighteningly angry as well.

This is kitchen-sink drama territory (lit by Jessica Trundy), with the brute reality of forms that need to be signed, care providers to be hired, and therapeutic modalities to be weighed. But these trials in the-world-as-it-is also supports the dramatic movement of the play, which is about a father and daughter struggling to learn how to speak with each other again. In Jennifer Zeyl’s thoughtful puzzle-box set, Patty’s dad’s apartment is recessed so that it can roll forward, making explicit his intrusion into her life. (Conversely, when it recedes, he’s out of mind.)

It can be heavy stuff, so the cartoon, ass-slapping comedy of Patty’s sexist workplace, if not all that funny, at least lightens the load briefly. That’s part of a subplot that might be titled “Patty Learns to Be Assertive and Express Her Anger,” which takes place mainly in a coffee shop. Jason Pead (who also plays Patty’s antediluvian boss) is the definitive barista-in-a-band. De Fazio makes a great straightwoman for Pead–she can hold her own with an awkward, arms-length cuddle with Lee, then shift gears for updated That Girl-style social comedy.

What never clicked for me, though, was the “zaniness” of Patty’s cancer-researcher roommate Jen (Kelsey Yuhara), who also has a variety of superpowers that she gives up using for the majority of the play to prove a point to her boyfriend Jack (Alec Wilson) that her accomplishments are her own. Costume designer Christine Meyer outfits Yuhara in Scott Pilgrim-worthy attire (and later outdoes herself with de Fazio’s ensemble), but there’s little reason for this character’s existence, dramatically, except as a foil for the presumed seriousness of economics-minded Patty. (Here’s the counterpoint position. It’s a matter of record that I stare blankly at the manufactured wacky and zany.)

The capably zany Juliet Waller Pruzan has choreographed a few numbers for the piece–some coming off better than others. The otherwise talented ensemble are not seasoned Broadway hoofers, and Waller Pruzan’s calls for quick, light heel taps looked a little labored on opening night. The scene at a dance club (that’s Robertson Witmer’s sound design), having a dramatic goal as well as a dance break, was kinder to the actors.

At the end, my companion said, “I give it a ‘meh.'” Nuances are important: I took that as a “I didn’t love it, but all right if you’re paying.” If you have some tolerance for Annex’s risk-taking on newer works, and even a guilty delight in the goofy, I think you might really enjoy the work. If, like me, you’re content to watch the outstanding performances of de Fazio and Lee, you may find that play within a play is enough for your $15.